At present, in order to ensure high availability of a server system, duplicate hot-standby technology is mainly adopted. The duplicate hot-standby technology is a highly fault-tolerant application scheme combining software and hardware.
In a server system with high availability achieved using duplicate hot-standby technology, an operating system and management software are installed in a master server and a standby server, respectively, and a communication signal is transmitted to each other between the master server and the standby server according to a specific time interval so as to inform the receiving server of the current running status of the sending server. If the master server breaks down, or the standby server cannot receive the communication signal from the master server, the management software will determine that the master server is in the fault state, and stop the master server, then transfer system resources to the standby server, which will continue working in place of the master server. Thus continuous running of the server system is guaranteed, and high availability is achieved.
However, in the server system with high availability achieved using duplicate hot-standby technology, each master server needs a corresponding standby server, when the master server is running normally; the corresponding standby server is in an idle state. This will cause a waste of standby system resources and, therefore, cause low utilization efficiency of the resources in the server system.